American companies interested in Guangdong FTZ

44.4 percent of participants reported interest in investing in the newly announced Free Trade Zones (FTZ) located in Guangdong.

44.4 percent of participants reported interest in investing in the newly announced Free Trade Zones (FTZ) located in Guangdong, according to 2015 White Paper on the Business Environment in China and 2015 Special Report on the State of Business in South China released by American Chamber of Commerce (Am Cham) in South China on March 2.

Despite the year of anti-graft movement and the economy slowdown, 85 percent of 275 companies participated in the 2015 Special Report rated the business environment in South China as "Good", "Very Good" or "Outstanding".

On the press conference, Harley Seyedin, the President of AmCham South China, expressed that he has faith on Guangdong government on FTZ issues. "I really believe that Guangdong official are much more flexible than Shanghai's" he said. "I'm exited and looking forward to it."

"I believe that our members are behind President Xi 100 percent, and we are looking forward to seeing where his strong leadership takes the nation in the coming years," he said. "We have seen great things already, but we also believe that the next phase of economic reform stands to greatly benefit the China's economy and its hard-working citizens."

Results of the study also shows 79.3 percent of participants reported that their primary business focus was providing goods or services to the Chinese market, while only 20.7 percent reported a primary focus of manufacturing for export. This is a sharp increase compared to only 23 percent of participants providing goods and service in 2003's study.

"Days are over", President Seyedin commented on "World Factory" which used to be a term specifically described China's state of business with cheap labor and cheap land. He believed this is a positive structure transition in Guangdong which match the mainstream of China's new normal economy.

Results of the study indicate that many AmCham South China member deferred reinvestment involving $250 million or more. According to the special report, 8.4 percent of the members intended to reinvest $250 million or great to expand their China operation, while only 6.4 percent of them actually doing so by the end of 2014.

President Seyedin told the press that although regional executives remain confident on China's market, the executives of parent or holding company hesitate on reinvesting large amount of money in China. He said due to latest events of investigation on Microsoft and Qualcomm, the unbalanced communication between the government and the company raised uncertainty on investment decision by the executives overseas. But Harley himself expressed he is "very confident" about the state of business in South China, especially after the launch of Free Trade Zones in the coming future.

The 300-paged White Paper, now in its seventh year, presents the business environment in China and argues for the nation's leadership to "Keep moving forward and accelerate the pace" of the economic reform. Both documents may be downloaded free of charge from the chamber's website at www.amcham-southchina.org.

According to the government work's report 2015, the information consumption of Guangdong reached 860 billion RMB in 2014, which surged about 20% than the previous year. E-commerce trading volume hits 2.63 trillion RMB, up 30.5%.

Zhu Xiaodan, Governor of Guangdong, vowed to breed a bunch of organized e-commerce platforms and websites to help transforming traditional industries, building an online-offline-integrated e-commerce service system among corporations.